Interesting that Creativ gets that error on Mac, because I just get terrible FPS (as I do on almost every other 4k game this year). There was a bad update to applets on Mac since last year which causes certain types of rendering to be slow as all hell.

At some point I promise I will figure out what's broken and what isn't post that somewhere.

Great game. I got blown up on level 2 on my first attempt. Has that one-more-go appeal

A small amount of fine tuning would make it even better. The controls are pretty sensitive, and I have to keep 'pecking' at thrust as otherwise I bounce rapidly all over the screen. Might be worth checking this is not dependent on machine speed. Also I keep pressing Down for thrust as I tend to think of the direction of thrust. That might just be personal preference though.

Doesn't work for me with IcedTea* / Firefox / Linux, Konqueror / Linux, or appletviewer (same IcedTea). I think the problem is that your server is responding to a request for /java4k/CaveRescue/T-pro-k.jar with a 404 when it should send T-pro-k.pack.gz with a Content-Encoding header. This whole issue of configuring servers correctly for pack.gz is one which has caused many of us headaches**. It's probably simplest for you just to put up the jar for the time being, so you can get feedback on the game.

@toasten&Pit: thanks the framerate is locked to 60, and is defo h/w independent - so I guess that's just the twitchy nature of the controls.. I've dampened them down a little, but find the softly-softly application of the boost kinda central to the gameplay (8-bit 'Thrust' was a big influence!)

@bysse: cheers - yeah, the only indication of cargo & capacity are the grey/blue blips at the bottom right of the screen.. Some help text would have been great, but sadly I'm right out of budget now!

@fruitmaze: thankyou! Its using verlet integration for the player & enemies; for the cavern walls I've calculated a vectorfield bitmap which repulses the entities' verts.. wanted to do lots more to showcase teh physics, but ran right outta space! oh well

ps. right, that's me all submitted.. I changed the name to "CaveFighter" since it sounded a bit more snappy.. i've had a lot of fun with this, and with playing everyone else's games too!

Interesting that Creativ gets that error on Mac, because I just get terrible FPS (as I do on almost every other 4k game this year). There was a bad update to applets on Mac since last year which causes certain types of rendering to be slow as all hell.

It's taking me some time to get used to the controls. The angular momentum of the spinning has caused some problems, in particular. I think I'm going up but the spinning continues and turns me back down again. Got rather frustrated before figuring out what was going on. Am wondering, maybe the maximum spin speed could be lower, or the spinning momentum subject to more dampening?

It took me a while to figure out I had to click IN THE GAME itself before the keyboard controls would work. Is there a way to program around that? Is this a generally known Applet issue, pertaining to focus or something like that?

It took me a while to figure out I could only carry four men, and the first time I went to the "surface" I couldn't tell if I had successfully reached it or not, and didn't notice that the four had been off-loaded! Kept banging into the ceiling asking WTF! Maybe more a comment on my intelligence than on the game design. (Maybe have a more explicit mothership or docking graphic to aim for?)

I'm not clear on when my shots are effective or not. Is it a simple count that has to be achieved to kill an enemy? Does a shot have to land on the enemy guards when they are in a specific state? I noticed there is a slight color shift in the middle section, but don't know if it is decorative or functional.

Definitely has that "try it just one more time" quality. Best score so far was getting up to level 5, on about a dozen tries. Amazing what one can do in under 4K, truly.

"We all secretly believe we are right about everything and, by extension, we are all wrong." W. Storr, The Unpersuadables

It took me a while to figure out I had to click IN THE GAME itself before the keyboard controls would work. Is there a way to program around that? Is this a generally known Applet issue, pertaining to focus or something like that?

use: Component.requestFocusInWindow();

Hi, appreciate more people! Σ ♥ = ¾Learn how to award medals... and work your way up the social rankings!

Heh, I'm afraid that there is no ending to the game.. I've tweaked the random generation for the first 10 levels, but after that they continue to be generated randomly. After level 10 the depth of the caverns remains at 10 screens however, to stop things getting too ridiculous! If you complete level 10+ then you can consider yourself pro

>> It took me a while to figure out I could only carry four men>> Maybe have a more explicit mothership or docking graphic to aim for

Yeah I agree.. but unfortunately I've squeezed the bytecode down to the best of my ability, and cannot fit anything more in

>> I'm not clear on when my shots are effective or not. Is it a simple count that has to be achieved to kill an enemy?>> Does a shot have to land on the enemy guards when they are in a specific state?>> I noticed there is a slight color shift in the middle section, but don't know if it is decorative or functional.

All enemies will die with 4 or 5 hits (I can't remember how many offhand), and the slight color change is just there to signify when an enemy has noticed you - its a basic radius check.

>> use: Component.requestFocusInWindow();

Cool, thanks for that Riven.. I will be sure to use that for next year's entry! ( and also hopefully find a workaround for the Mac issue )

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